Sometimes you just have to get out of this town. When the 4th of July turns into a circus with firework donations to curry favor in trade wars and tanks paraded around for VIPs, going to the Shenandoah mountains to enjoy the beauty of nature without cell phone reception sounded just about perfect. We booked a room at Big Meadows lodge, and convinced our traveling buddies the Telfair-Cha's to join us for a mini National Park vacation.
We started out our first day in the park hiking Upper Hawksbill trail, a fairly easy 2 mile hike with 500 feet of elevation gain to the peak of the tallest mountain in Shenandoah National Park (as you can guess from the 'upper' in the name, we started pretty high up ;-) It was a nice warm up hike, the views were spectacular, and we got to try out Steve and Megan's new trekking poles.
After Upper Hawksbill we checked in at the lodge and decided to hike down the Dark Hollow Falls trail. That seemed like the prudent choice given that thunderstorms were in the forecast, and hiking up to a lightning prone peak seemed like a bad idea. The hike was a lovely little 1.5 miles out and back, with a little more that 500 foot descent to the falls. Being one of the easier beautiful hikes, it was a bit crowded, but the falls were gorgeous and totally worth it. The rain started falling as we were viewing the falls, so we double timed it back up and headed back to the lodge for dinner.
After dinner we were all going over to Steve and Megan's room to hang out and enjoy some wine and beer that Steve and I picked up from the camp store. I ran by our room first to grab some camp chairs, then walked across the parking lot to their room only to find the door still locked. They were taking so long because right on the playground next to their room they saw a black bear! The bear was walking across the playground towards the rooms, and from a safe distance Elaine, Megan, Nora and Mirabel all noticed the bear was walking right towards a person. At that same moment, I turned around trying to see what was taking everyone so long, only to see a bear just a few feet away staring right at me :-o I was pretty much cornered, so I was quite grateful when the bear turned away and walked on by, and of course I didn't let my nerves prevent me from getting a decent picture of the bear ;-)
The original plan for Saturday was to hike Old Rag, but the forecast called for afternoon thunderstorms again, so we decided it was better to avoid a 9 hour hike where we could be high up on the mountain during a storm. Instead we decided to break the day up into two hikes again, an early hike up to a peak, and an afternoon hike down to a waterfall. For the morning hike we chose Bearfence trail, a short but intense hike with a long rock scramble up to a peak with a 360 degree view (though half of that view was obscured by a giant cloud).
For our afternoon hike, we researched some secret swimming holes, and found one that was supposed to be somewhere along the Whiteoak Canyon trail. We weren't totally sure how far the swimming hole was, but we charged ahead none the less. It ended up being serval miles and about a 1,000 foot decent to the falls, which took enough time for Nora to tell most of the epic tale of how she helped invent soup rolling during the Great Depression, and how 100 of the 104 soup rollers died in horrible accidents. Thankfully the trail wasn't as dangerous as soup rolling, but by the time we got down to the falls viewing point with no swimming hole in sight, we did have some tired hikers almost ready to bail. I convinced everyone to let me run ahead and make one last push to find a place to take a dip, and with a little bit of luck I found it doubled back from the main trail and tucked away in the middle of a series of water falls. The water was frigid, but some of us got used to it and enjoyed sitting in the falls and swimming around a pretty amazing spot!
The Telfair-Cha's headed home after the Whiteoak Canyon hike, but we had one more night in the park and big plans for the next day. In the morning we met up with Katherine, Lee and Makayla on the Shenandoah river for a tubing adventure. We floated lazily along (except where there were little rapids that necessitated raising our bums), enjoying our sandwiches and beverages, and Katherine certainly didn't break any rules :-)
(click here for all the pictures)
We started out our first day in the park hiking Upper Hawksbill trail, a fairly easy 2 mile hike with 500 feet of elevation gain to the peak of the tallest mountain in Shenandoah National Park (as you can guess from the 'upper' in the name, we started pretty high up ;-) It was a nice warm up hike, the views were spectacular, and we got to try out Steve and Megan's new trekking poles.
After Upper Hawksbill we checked in at the lodge and decided to hike down the Dark Hollow Falls trail. That seemed like the prudent choice given that thunderstorms were in the forecast, and hiking up to a lightning prone peak seemed like a bad idea. The hike was a lovely little 1.5 miles out and back, with a little more that 500 foot descent to the falls. Being one of the easier beautiful hikes, it was a bit crowded, but the falls were gorgeous and totally worth it. The rain started falling as we were viewing the falls, so we double timed it back up and headed back to the lodge for dinner.
After dinner we were all going over to Steve and Megan's room to hang out and enjoy some wine and beer that Steve and I picked up from the camp store. I ran by our room first to grab some camp chairs, then walked across the parking lot to their room only to find the door still locked. They were taking so long because right on the playground next to their room they saw a black bear! The bear was walking across the playground towards the rooms, and from a safe distance Elaine, Megan, Nora and Mirabel all noticed the bear was walking right towards a person. At that same moment, I turned around trying to see what was taking everyone so long, only to see a bear just a few feet away staring right at me :-o I was pretty much cornered, so I was quite grateful when the bear turned away and walked on by, and of course I didn't let my nerves prevent me from getting a decent picture of the bear ;-)
The original plan for Saturday was to hike Old Rag, but the forecast called for afternoon thunderstorms again, so we decided it was better to avoid a 9 hour hike where we could be high up on the mountain during a storm. Instead we decided to break the day up into two hikes again, an early hike up to a peak, and an afternoon hike down to a waterfall. For the morning hike we chose Bearfence trail, a short but intense hike with a long rock scramble up to a peak with a 360 degree view (though half of that view was obscured by a giant cloud).
For our afternoon hike, we researched some secret swimming holes, and found one that was supposed to be somewhere along the Whiteoak Canyon trail. We weren't totally sure how far the swimming hole was, but we charged ahead none the less. It ended up being serval miles and about a 1,000 foot decent to the falls, which took enough time for Nora to tell most of the epic tale of how she helped invent soup rolling during the Great Depression, and how 100 of the 104 soup rollers died in horrible accidents. Thankfully the trail wasn't as dangerous as soup rolling, but by the time we got down to the falls viewing point with no swimming hole in sight, we did have some tired hikers almost ready to bail. I convinced everyone to let me run ahead and make one last push to find a place to take a dip, and with a little bit of luck I found it doubled back from the main trail and tucked away in the middle of a series of water falls. The water was frigid, but some of us got used to it and enjoyed sitting in the falls and swimming around a pretty amazing spot!
The Telfair-Cha's headed home after the Whiteoak Canyon hike, but we had one more night in the park and big plans for the next day. In the morning we met up with Katherine, Lee and Makayla on the Shenandoah river for a tubing adventure. We floated lazily along (except where there were little rapids that necessitated raising our bums), enjoying our sandwiches and beverages, and Katherine certainly didn't break any rules :-)
(click here for all the pictures)
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